Recommendations: Banned Books

Hey all, Dani here.

I’m unplugged for the weekend (pretty much), so sorry if I don’t actually respond to any comments or anything. It has been a long couple of weeks and I’m very excited that Damian and I decided to go visit his grandparents and go hiking and camp outside. It’s going to be a bit chilly in the overnight hours, but hey, that’s what warm blankets and cuddling are for, right?

Anyway, the last of my Banned Books Week posts, for this year at least, is today’s standard recommendations post. Now I do have this previous Banned Books Recommendations post, so I will also direct you to checking it out, but let me add some more options for your perusal.

Oh, and here are some banned books lists from 2019 to check out:

• 11 Challenged and Banned Comics
  • This includes books like Watchmen, Lumberjanes, and Assassination Classroom
• 11 Challenged and Banned Books
• Banned Spotlight: Plays and Musicals
  • This list includes “Avenue Q,” which was censored not because of the inappropriate nature, the language, the racism, or anything like that. No, this was censored from ads in the newspaper because of “visible puppet cleavage.” Seriously? I’ve seen “Avenue Q,” twice, and it is a fantastic satire of adult issues set up in an adult Sesame Street format. Yes, there is adult language and content, and yes some of the jokes and such are rude and inappropriate, but I still think it is an important musical.
• 10 Reasons Books Are Challenged and Banned
  • Okay, this list is technically from last year’s BBW, but all of these reasons are still accurate and valid.
• 110+ Challenged and Banned Books and Plays to Read for Banned Books Week
  • Again, this list is from last year, but it is still accurate and valid. Some books will show up on the top 10/11 banned list year after year for a decade or more.
• Frequently Challenged Books
  • This is from the official American Library Association page, and has links to challenged books of different years and/or genres.

I recommend any and all of these books. In fact, so many of the books I read and review on this blog contain the same or similar content to those that are frequently challenged or banned.

Do you know how many adults complain about Jay Kristoff’s Nevernight trilogy because of the dark and inappropriate nature of it considering the teen age of the leading lady? Of course this is not helped by people continually shelving these books in the YA section. For the record, THEY ARE NOT YA AT ALL! There is a lot of sex and violence and vulgar language in them. But they are also fantastic books.

From an earlier post in this Banned Books series, I have been inspired to seek out the research and write up a post on censorship around the world, but that might take a little bit of time for me to put together. I’m hoping to have it up by the end of the year. Because hey, Banned Books Week is actually a global event. I just think that so much of what happens here in the USA is made known to the rest of the world.

So if you are a non-USA based book reader/blogger/vlogger/Bookstagrammer/etc, if you have censorship stats for your country, link me to them, or write up your own censorship post and link me into that. I’m very interested in this issue.

Sorry this isn’t like my standard recommendations post. But I figured linking to some of the already existing lists and letting you all peruse some of these challenged books for yourself just made more sense.

I’ll be back soon with more bookish content.